Outdoors: Bucks begin to shed antlers as winter pays visit

Tuesday

Jan 8, 2013 at 6:00 AMJan 8, 2013 at 8:26 AM

Mark Blazis Outdoors

The favorable conditions that stimulated antler growth last spring are all unraveling. With the onset of winter, bucks are weakening, and so are their antler attachments. It's shedding time for whitetails.

Antlers are a sexual phenomenon found only on deer. Horns are much different. Though the latter may have a boney core, their exterior is made of keratin, the same material that forms our fingernails — and with few exceptions, they're permanent. Antlers, in contrast, are solid bone and typically deciduous. The antelope of Africa, America's mountain goats, mountain sheep, bison and pronghorns all have horns.

An impressive antler rack is the pride and burden of males, though caribou and reindeer females grow them, too — an apparent response to needs for both shoveling deep snow that often covers their food as well as fighting off other females that vie for scarce forage.

Though antlers are typically a male appendage, some female whitetails having abnormally high testosterone levels aberrantly produce small ones.

The massive, trophy racks that hunters admire reform each year, starting out each spring as bumps of soft, delicate cartilage. Fed a heavy diet of minerals by a velvet-like, highly vascularized skin covering, the tines continue growing from the tips outward through late August. At that time, the rich blood supply to the mature antlers shuts off, and they become solid, dead bone.

The rapid growth of antlers — the fastest growing bone in the world — comes at a great price to the ostentatious bucks, which involuntarily transfer precious nutrients from their bodies to their racks. In times of dietary deficiency, their all-important antlers will absorb calcium and phosphorous from a deer's skeleton, much the same as a fetus absorbs essential nutrients from a human mother. It seems incomprehensible that bucks would cast off their expensive magnificence every year.

In a matter of weeks, even the most extraordinary bucks will begin to look indistinguishable — just like antlerless does. The one exception that I've seen was on a hunt in Wyoming, where an old buck that had had a testicular injury early in its life developed a rack that looked like a big clump of velvet-covered cauliflower. It never shed its antlers or lost its velvet.

Deer racks are weapons, as well as statements of individuality and hierarchical position for mating. They're generally the decisive factor in male-to-male competition. In some species, they entice a female that is genetically programmed with the instinct that bigger is better.

Antlers are also a barometer of a buck's health. In a good year, a buck will likely drop his rack within a week or two of his normal shedding date. But if he gets sick or injured, has endured intense competition, severe mating demands because of an unnaturally high doe-to-buck ratio, bad weather, drought, lack of food, or constant predatory threats, he'll shed his antlers as much as a month earlier than normal.

On New Year's Day, one of my trail cameras situated on a south-facing slope where deer perennially seek comfort from winter's brutality recorded a buck carrying just half its rack. He is part of the vanguard of shedders that will drastically change their appearance by the end of the month. By week's end, he'll have surely dropped the other half of his rack, if he hasn't already. Often a buck will drop both sides of his antlers within a matter of hours.

What is causing this deciduous phenomenon that seemingly wastes hard-won, essential mineral nutrients each winter? Discarding these mineral rich treasures at the end of each year seems an illogical, physiological behavior.

One of several triggers of shedding is the decreasing daylight, which diminishes testosterone levels. A surge in male hormones is essential for antler growth and maintenance. A decrease in testosterone ends growth and leads to antler loss. Antlers are weapons of aggression for deciding mating privileges. With the mating season over, they have little function now and their continuance might lead to further aggression and mortality during periods of competition for scarce food supplies. In the long run, nature has decided that bucks in winter are better off without them.

In addition, bucks — even the biggest and strongest — are now very tired from mating, fighting and minimal feeding during the rut. Many have lost as much as 30 pounds. Significantly weakened, their antlers drop as deciduously as autumn leaves. It is time for the shed hunter to ply his passion.

The best time to look for sheds is March — after melted snows expose them and before new vegetation hides them and rodents chew them away. We definitely don't want to jeopardize deer now, scaring them off their beds, forcing them to needlessly burn limited energy supplies. Besides, finding sheds in snow is seldom successful.

Shed hunters will learn much about the size and number of bucks that survived the hunting season, totally evading us. Their findings will inspire their next quest. Few aspects of deer hunting are more challenging and rewarding than recovering the sheds of a reclusive giant buck and unraveling his brilliantly secret habits. It's no wonder dedicated shed hunters sometimes prize the racks they find nearly as much as the deer they shoot.

Contact Mark Blazis at markblazis@charter.net.

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